Which do you prefer: signal dots, or signal bars?

Dots

Bars

dB

Go to page

Contributor

I'm curious as to what everyone thinks about Apple switching away from the traditional signal bars over to dots. Seeing the dots, I prefer the bars, but seeing them together, like above, I prefer the dots .

Member

Bring back the bars! Universally the bars represent signal strength, why did they have to go and change that? At the end of the day it doesn't matter I still know how much signal I have, I just prefer the bars.

Zealot

Zealot

OK, I'll be the oddball, I prefer dB. Better than just 5 bars of resolution, if that's worth anything. I tried casting my vote up at the top of this thread but the radio buttons are missing for some reason.

Zealot

That's what decibels would be, numerals. Lowest signal strength I have seen is -115 the strongest signal was -48 (I was about 300 feet from the tower). The closer the number is to zero the stronger the signal. I have a tweak in my phone which shows signal strength as either -dB or bars. I can switch between the two modes at will. The phone does not have to be jail broken to use it.

Moderator

I drop calls just the same with five bars, five dots or decibels close to zero, so I don't really care how the signal strength is represented. I just want it to take as little space as possible on the status bar.

Evangelist

I have been rocking the dBm signal strength display for years. I hate bars, bars tell me nothing. Dots, same problem in a bigger package.

The numeric display gives a better indicator of when your phone is going to require more juice to communicate with the tower (further from zero: more power used)

For those curious, it doesn't require a jailbreak:

Field test mode.

1. Dial *3001#12345#* and hit call
2. You should be in the field test app and see a numeric signal strength indicator in place of bars (a negative number, which is your dBm reading).
3. Hold the power button til the slider shows up.
4. Let go of power and hold in home to force close Field Test while keeping the numeric signal strength indicator.
5. Tap it to toggle back and forth between bars (or dots in this case) and numbers

I have been able to squeeze out a little bit of data as far down as -125, but it was sucking down juice like GPS at that point. Usually I'm sitting halfway between, at about -90

To reverse the trick so you always have bars/dots, perform step 1 again and just go home like normal.

Zealot

I drop calls just the same with five bars, five dots or decibels close to zero, so I don't really care how the signal strength is represented. I just want it to take as little space as possible on the status bar.

Evangelist

I'm curious as to what everyone thinks about Apple switching away from the traditional signal bars over to dots. Seeing the dots, I prefer the bars, but seeing them together, like above, I prefer the dots .